A Tale of Two Species
A Tale of Two Species
Book and series of eight soft-ground etchings with chine-collé
A Tale of Two Species is both a book and a series of prints exploring the quiet drama of invasive species—and the human role in their spread. These animals didn’t choose to cross borders; we moved them. Through shipping routes, ballast water, cargo holds, and well-meaning interventions, we introduced them—and they stayed, often at the cost of native habitats.
Each etching pairs an invasive species with a native one it impacts, creating visual relationships that shift between conflict, shadowing, and uneasy coexistence. The prints were made using soft-ground etching to capture fine textures—fur, feathers, foliage—and chine-collé to add translucent layers that settle like memory through the image.
But this isn’t a book about villains. I chose not to label which animal is which. Because once the language falls away—native, invasive, welcome, unwanted—what’s left is something more honest: two lives, tangled by human movement, human decisions, human boundaries.
The book doesn’t ask you to take sides. It asks you to look closely. To feel the discomfort of not knowing—and still care. It’s about what we notice, what we overlook, and how we decide who belongs where in the first place.